Phil Mason – författare

New York Times Bestseller! A compendium about tiny ripples that created big waves in history. What was Hitler’s real name? Which famous artist was mistakenly thought to be stillborn, until his uncle revived him by blowing cigar smoke in his face? And what were Albert Einstein’s last words?Hilarious, fascinating, and a roller coaster of dizzying historical what-ifs and lesser-known anecdotes, Napoleon’s Hemorrhoids is a potpourri for serious historians and casual history buffs that reveals how much of history turned out to be the consequences of fortune, accident, or luck.Here, you’ll learn that Communist jets were two minutes away from opening fire on American planes during the Cuban missile crisis, when they had to turn back as they were running out of fuel. You’ll discover that before the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon’s painful hemorrhoids prevented him from mounting his horse to survey the battlefield. You’ll learn that Nixon’s White House taping system was accidentally revealed by an aide, causing his downfall in the Watergate scandal. You’ll discover how Coca-Cola’s most famous advertisement, launched in 1971 was inspired by an unplanned all-night layover at an Irish airport.(And . . . no one actually knows Einstein’s last words. They were in German, a language his nurse did not speak.)A treasure trove of astonishing anecdotes about the tiny ripples that created big waves in history, Napoleon’s Hemorrhoids reveals how our most famous incidents, best-loved works of art, and most accepted historical outcomes are simply twists of fate.

Recycling is a basic anthropological process of humankind. The reutilization of materials or of ideas from the Past is a process determined by various natural or cultural causes. Recycling can be motivated by a crisis or by a complex symbolic cause like the incorporation of the Past into the Present. What archaeology has not insisted upon is the dimensional scale of the process, which operates from the micro-scale of the recycling of the ancestors’ material, up to the macro-scale of the landscape. It is well known that there are direct relations between artefacts and landscapes in what concerns the materiality and mobility of objects. An additional relation between artefact and landscape may be the process of recycling. In many ways artefact and landscape can be considered as one aspect of material culture, perceived at a different scale, since both have the same materiality and suffer the same process of reutilisation. This book invites archaeologists to approach the significant process of recycling within the archaeological record at two different levels: of artefacts and of landscape.

Recycling is a basic anthropological process of humankind. The reutilization of materials or of ideas from the Past is a process determined by various natural or cultural causes. Recycling can be motivated by a crisis or by a complex symbolic cause like the incorporation of the Past into the Present. What archaeology has not insisted upon is the dimensional scale of the process, which operates from the micro-scale of the recycling of the ancestors’ material, up to the macro-scale of the landscape. It is well known that there are direct relations between artefacts and landscapes in what concerns the materiality and mobility of objects. An additional relation between artefact and landscape may be the process of recycling. In many ways artefact and landscape can be considered as one aspect of material culture, perceived at a different scale, since both have the same materiality and suffer the same process of reutilisation. This book invites archaeologists to approach the significant process of recycling within the archaeological record at two different levels: of artefacts and of landscape.